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Before playing the beta I'd convinced myself barbarian was the way to go, with demon hunter and wizard as a second class when playing with friends.

Well... barbarian is still my first choice. Sheeeeeit, I felt like a beast even before unlocking leap. Being able to jump into the fray was the icing on the cake.

DH and wizard didn't grab me though. I much preferred witch doctor for a ranged class. I keep hearing love for jar of spiders, but the triple shot poison dart was my preference. I love targeting those fat dudes first and setting off a chain reaction of carnage. It really seemed like the mobs had been set up with that in mind. Fat dude surrounded by a swarm of zombies. BOOM!

I left the monk to last because I figured there was no way he could top the barb. He didn't, but was a lot more fun than I expected.

I was just impressed with how many different random encounters there were compared to D2. Two possible encounters in the crypts, I think I had 3 or 4 different mini cellar areas just in the area's around New Tristram, as well as a few unique encounters in the Cathedral itself. It definitely means the recurring play throughs of each difficulty can and will throw you some minor twists to keep things fresh, which is refreshing to see.

Also, one thing I noticed. My first monk kill of the Skeleton king, I did *not* get a rare off him. But I did get 4 blues. So that was a bit odd.

Is there a way to tell how much damage skills do? Like, there's a rune for the wizard magic missile spell that increases damage. Well, how much does it increase it by?

If you hold ctrl while mousing over a skill, it will say "does x% of weapon damage". You can also turn on advanced tooltips in the options to always display that info without holding ctrl.

I wish it would display even more concrete info, as with some skills it is still ambiguous. For example, bash says "Brutally smash an enemy for 150% weapon damage". But is that both weapons? Mainhand only? Or does it alternate between mainhand and offhand? The animation looks like he swings both simultaneously.

Also, one thing I noticed. My first monk kill of the Skeleton king, I did *not* get a rare off him. But I did get 4 blues. So that was a bit odd.

Weird, I thought that was fixed. I know earlier in the beta you only had like a 90% chance to get a rare (my WD went rareless on his first kill), but I thought they figured out that was dumb and made the first-time kill give guaranteed rare(s) recently?

Also, one thing I noticed. My first monk kill of the Skeleton king, I did *not* get a rare off him. But I did get 4 blues. So that was a bit odd.

Weird, I thought that was fixed. I know earlier in the beta you only had like a 90% chance to get a rare (my WD went rareless on his first kill), but I thought they figured out that was dumb and made the first-time kill give guaranteed rare(s) recently?

I killed him with 5 new chars over the weekend, got rares on all of the first kills. Most of the rares were crap though. Best thing I got was probably a rare orb off hand for the wizard and also some level 3? Rare Barb/Str Gloves.

Also, one thing I noticed. My first monk kill of the Skeleton king, I did *not* get a rare off him. But I did get 4 blues. So that was a bit odd.

Weird, I thought that was fixed. I know earlier in the beta you only had like a 90% chance to get a rare (my WD went rareless on his first kill), but I thought they figured out that was dumb and made the first-time kill give guaranteed rare(s) recently?

I killed him with 5 new chars over the weekend, got rares on all of the first kills. Most of the rares were crap though. Best thing I got was probably a rare orb off hand for the wizard and also some level 3? Rare Barb/Str Gloves.

OK? That doesn't make it not suck to kill a big boss and not see anything yellow pop out.

The Act II dungeons in D2 were creepy, especially the maggot lair, primarily because you couldn't see shit in front of you and hey, LE beetles. I hate beetles.

That was one of the worst parts of Act 2. Being pinned to a narrow hallway where didn't even have the opportunity to dodge attacks was BS. All it did was encourage people to get rushed straight to Duriel (the worst part of Act 2).

Playing the beta over the weekend reminded me exactly how much D2 wrecked my wrist. I don't think I can take it (at least, not as monk). Seems like I would have to play wizard (or DH? What is *least* clicky? Ray of frost as a starter seemed pretty benign.)

Couple guys at work are taking a week off from work... One is even taking two weeks. I envy them.

That...is ridiculous. As much as I love video games and Diablo, I refuse to take anymore than a day (two max) off to play any video game.

One day? Yeah okay, understandable if you're excited.

Two days? That's pushing it (but since 5/15 is a Wednesday, Thursday/Friday off for a 4 day weekend is an idea).

A whole week? You must really dislike your job or have a serious problem.

Eh, the only other real holidays I take are for festivals in the summer and those are only a couple of days off as they run over the weekend.

I get 28 days, may as well use em to enjoy my hobby rather than just waste em doing nothing at the end of the year.

I suppose. I'd also like to mention that I have no desire to be the "first" to inferno. I'm going to savor every delightful minute of normal mode that I can and explore every inch of map area. However, playing from dawn to dawn for 7 days sounds more like a chore and less like an enjoyable experience.

Playing the beta over the weekend reminded me exactly how much D2 wrecked my wrist. I don't think I can take it (at least, not as monk). Seems like I would have to play wizard (or DH? What is *least* clicky? Ray of frost as a starter seemed pretty benign.)

I seriously haven't used a mouse in months and dusted it off to use with the beta. I actually was doing pretty well with my trackpad; some tinkering with the settings might let me lose the mouse altogether. My arm/wrist just isn't used to doing that anymore.

I get 3 weeks of vacation a year, I end up taking 1 week for my birthday, and then the other 2 weeks usually whenever I want. Taking weeks off for game releases isn't terrible, and its not like you OMG HAVE TO PLAY from dawn to dawn like Koopah says. :p It just means that when you do want to play that game that first week, theres nothing stopping you.

Playing the beta over the weekend reminded me exactly how much D2 wrecked my wrist. I don't think I can take it (at least, not as monk). Seems like I would have to play wizard (or DH? What is *least* clicky? Ray of frost as a starter seemed pretty benign.)

I have to figure that the huge aoe spells of the wizard, properly runed, would probably yield the most damage per click. the beta was a little spam-heavy, though, I only got to 9 with my wizard and arcane orb + magic missile + kiting backwards was a fair bit of APM.

Couple guys at work are taking a week off from work... One is even taking two weeks. I envy them.

That...is ridiculous. As much as I love video games and Diablo, I refuse to take anymore than a day (two max) off to play any video game.

One day? Yeah okay, understandable if you're excited.

Two days? That's pushing it (but since 5/15 is a Wednesday, Thursday/Friday off for a 4 day weekend is an idea).

A whole week? You must really dislike your job or have a serious problem.

Eh, the only other real holidays I take are for festivals in the summer and those are only a couple of days off as they run over the weekend.

I get 28 days, may as well use em to enjoy my hobby rather than just waste em doing nothing at the end of the year.

I suppose. I'd also like to mention that I have no desire to be the "first" to inferno. I'm going to savor every delightful minute of normal mode that I can and explore every inch of map area. However, playing from dawn to dawn for 7 days sounds more like a chore and less like an enjoyable experience.

Oh I'm in no way a rusher, I'll be exploring and taking in every sight and sound I can find but I'm not gonna be playing constantly too.

Trying to save for a new house/car in your early-mid twenties is difficult at the best of times, so relaxing at home playing games and sitting in the garden reading for a week allows me to save a bunch of money but still head to some festivals with friends and treat those as holidays too.

I get 4 weeks vacation per year, 5 if I stretch it out a little (which I usually do), 6 if I'm willing to commit to some pretty hefty overtime hours for a few extra lieu days.

I generally only take full weeks off (9 days off in a row at the cost of 4-5 days vacation/lieu/etc), so while I may take a week off "for diablo 3" in early June, it'll be a combination marathon playing, running errands, and just enjoying being paid to not be at work. It's not like I play to put 100 hours into the game that week, but yeah, there might be some excessive playtime periods, counterpointed by some movie viewing, MTG deck building, Malifaux figure assembly/painting, other game backloggery, napping, etc.

But as a short hand, "taking a week off to play diablo 3" pretty much sums up the primary interest/goal/intent.

Playing the beta over the weekend reminded me exactly how much D2 wrecked my wrist. I don't think I can take it (at least, not as monk). Seems like I would have to play wizard (or DH? What is *least* clicky? Ray of frost as a starter seemed pretty benign.)

This is why I'm so interested in the possibility of using an xbox controller on my PC, but I haven't heard if anyone's given it a try.

Couple guys at work are taking a week off from work... One is even taking two weeks. I envy them.

That...is ridiculous. As much as I love video games and Diablo, I refuse to take anymore than a day (two max) off to play any video game.

One day? Yeah okay, understandable if you're excited.

Two days? That's pushing it.

A whole week? You must really dislike your job or have a serious problem.

If you have nothing to really spend your vacation days on, why not just schedule your times off when you can laze around just playing games?

I have 19 days of vacation a year, I'm too far away from my family to see them more then at Xmas time, which i usually schedule 9-10 vacation days for, but the rest, I was single for a while so vacations seem kinda wasteful and I wasnt making enough to really want to waste the money on them, so I wasnt afraid to just use them whenever...a day here or there, give myself a 4 day weekend before or after a big project, and not have anything planned, just free time. a week for a game does sound like a bit much, but it depends. I'll usually take 1-2 days off to play, even with the WoW expansions i would just take a few days off to make it a long weekend and that would be enough. Still, dont see anything wrong with using the vacation days for something you like.

Playing the beta over the weekend reminded me exactly how much D2 wrecked my wrist. I don't think I can take it (at least, not as monk). Seems like I would have to play wizard (or DH? What is *least* clicky? Ray of frost as a starter seemed pretty benign.)

This is why I'm so interested in the possibility of using an xbox controller on my PC, but I haven't heard if anyone's given it a try.

As far as I know it's not a controller friendly game out of the box although it really probably should be. You could probably use one of those controller mapper programs with it and get it to work alright.

Playing the beta over the weekend reminded me exactly how much D2 wrecked my wrist. I don't think I can take it (at least, not as monk). Seems like I would have to play wizard (or DH? What is *least* clicky? Ray of frost as a starter seemed pretty benign.)

This is why I'm so interested in the possibility of using an xbox controller on my PC, but I haven't heard if anyone's given it a try.

As far as I know it's not a controller friendly game out of the box although it really probably should be. You could probably use one of those controller mapper programs with it and get it to work alright.

Its extremely hard to emulate the mouse movement with a controller. It would have to be the analog -> mouse emulation, which would mean you'd have a pretty poor time playing it with a controller. It doesnt support a controller without emulation, currently.